Miami vs UF/ National ND recognition Forum

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Npret

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Re: Miami vs UF/ National ND recognition

Post by Npret » Tue Mar 05, 2019 3:58 pm

dudeknows wrote:
Npret wrote:
dudeknows wrote:
LegalComedian wrote:Have been accepted into Miami and UF law. Full scholarships to both. Eventually want to end up back in Miami, but really looking to work for IJ in DC before that. Other factors certainly play in there (fed soc, ties, etc), but in a vacuum, which is a better choice? UF is higher ranked but from what I hear, Miami is more respected among local firms and BigLaw offices. It also has higher bar pass rate and employment stats. Lastly, Miami's new President has talked about investing highly in the law school, so the ranking should hopefully been going up.

Also accepted to Notre Dame with partial scholarship, but not sure the name carries outside the Midwest. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I'm not sure where you are hearing that UM Is more respected, from my experience it is the opposite. That is especially so when it comes to biglaw. I think UF outperforms UM in almost every metric in Miami and would be surprised if UM does any better DC too. If you do well at UF, you will have almost every door open to you in the city.

I won't speak on DC cause I just don't know about that. But as a UFer, I personally know classmates that went to DC from UF.

MORE IMPORTANTLY: A ton of people on this forum are completely uninformed on the Miami market (just look at other Miami threads). I think that the majority of poster that speak about Miami are actually in a T14 school, which routinely do very poorly in placing their students in the market. That creates this strange bias on the forum where it seems impossible to land a biglaw job coming out of any school, much less UF or UM. But the reality of the situation is that if you do well (top 20%) in either school, you have a fighting chance at landing a good job in the city (maybe not a V50 firm, but a respected shop). Of course, as you go up the rankings the probability increases until you get to around the top 5%, at which point it is almost guaranteed that you land a cush job, unless you are a complete weirdo. Also, UF's ranges for getting a good job are probably better--top 20% student at UF has a better shot than top 20% at UM.
People aren’t misinformed at all. Miami is a tiny, insular market. The advice that it is difficult to get a job in Miami is because of your requirement that the student be at least top 20% couples of course with the requiremen of ties.
Having to be in the top 20% or higher to reach your only desired outcome is risky. That’s why people caution about the competitive market and difficulties in landing a big law job.
Having to have significant ties is a requirement people either have or they don’t. People from T14 schools with ties get jobs in Miami. Just remember that there are a handful of jobs in Miami so the competition is high.
Common wisdom on TLS (just search "Miami") about Miami biglaw is that there are less than 20 SA positions in the city. That's just false. And I already said that its an upstream battle.
How many biglaw 1st year jobs are there in Miami then? My guess is less than a hundred, maybe 75?. Tell us the facts so we know. I’m not invested enough to go calculate it on NALP.
So you know my bias I was at a nyc firm where the summer class was close to a hundred so of course Miami seems tiny in comparison.

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